New PC Required

[Patrick]

Re: New PC Required

[Josh Bear]

Re: New PC Required

Patrick's point on external monitors is an excellent one. In fact the need for an external monitor is partially what drove my choice of mac pro vs iMac. I needed a monitor with additional inputs to act as the display for the xbox .

I too was a a long time windows user. I had a power PC myself and ran a laptop downstairs for my wife and kids. All sort of worked well but when the laptop lost the will the live I took the opportunity to buy a small screened iMac for the family. The first thing I noticed was the silence from home during the day. The phone calls from my wife starting with the sentence " hi, it's me. The computer is doing this (insert random crash message)" just stopped. The family found the mac really easy to use and I agree with the comment from Ash that it makes you think why windows was so complicated by comparison. Given that I had multiple external hard drives and windows programs it took me another 9 months before I could face what I thought would be a huge move to a mac for myself. But with decision made I visited an apple store and had an appt with one of their sales guys and as I said earlier left with the model I needed rather than the one I thought I needed saving me a considerable amount of money. The service was excellent. For example I wanted more ram installed. The apple tech told me to go and have a coffee and a cake and they would fit the ram right there and then. Post that they offered free one to one training if I wanted it and even offered to transfer all my data from my PC. The cherry on the top for me was the phone call I received from the sales guy three weeks post purchase asking me how I was getting on and reminding me to give them a call if I wanted any help. Over all the years of buying a PC I have never had that sort of service.

I am now running a mac pro with 4 internal hardrives (which install in seconds with no exposed wires in the case) 14 gb of ram, and all backed up using time machine which means I can go back and correct those "small" deletion errors we all make from time to time

So in summary. I am not an apple fan because of the name apple. I am an apple fan because I do appreciate simplicity, i appreciate something that just works the way it supposed to with a significant drop in crashes vs my windows machines (note there are still some occasions when you need to force quit a specific program but I have never seen a full system crash yet) .

So going back to the start whichever route you go down all you will see on forums are the personal views of individuals which have been shaped by their experiences none of which should influence you but rather provide background knowledge on the given subject.

Best regards
Josh

[Ian]

[ash]

Re: New PC Required

Hi Josh. I too wish the imac had more inputs for external sources, however a bit late for you now but might be helpfull for others, there are third party adapters that allow any hdmi input to be displayed through the imacs mini displayport at 720p.

check this link:

http://www.kanexlive.com/products/kanexXD.html

cheers
Ash.

[Gina]

Re: New PC Required

I'm still here Ian, just about to go out with the family so will give a more detailed response later xxx

[Ian]

[Patrick]

Re: New PC Required

[Josh Bear]

Re: New PC Required

Hi Josh. I too wish the imac had more inputs for external sources, however a bit late for you now but might be helpfull for others, there are third party adapters that allow any hdmi input to be displayed through the imacs mini displayport at 720p.

check this link:

http://www.kanexlive.com/products/kanexXD.html

cheers
Ash.

Thanks Ash, but in all honesty I would still go for the Mac pro as I wanted the additional storage capacity of the 4 hard drive bays and I am also utilising the 4 firewire 800 ports which are amazingly fast.

Best regards

Josh

[Patrick]

Re: New PC Required

Thanks Ash, but in all honesty I would still go for the Mac pro as I wanted the additional storage capacity of the 4 hard drive bays and I am also utilising the 4 firewire 800 ports which are amazingly fast.

Best regards

Josh

Hi Josh have you tried daisy chaining the firewire? I was wondering if speed were lost when doing so. I have an external storage using the firewire but iMacs have only one so I was intending having another hard drive daisy chained of the H/D I have.

Patrick

[Josh Bear]

Re: New PC Required

Hi Josh have you tried daisy chaining the firewire? I was wondering if speed were lost when doing so. I have an external storage using the firewire but iMacs have only one so I was intending having another hard drive daisy chained of the H/D I have.

Patrick

Hi

I did a bit of reading on the subject and the summary seems to be yes you can daisy chain and the only time there will be a slow down of speed will be if you access a file off one of the drives and then whilst that activity is happening try and do something on another drive in the chain. Slow down is due to using the same bandwidth.

Hope this helps

Josh

[Patrick]

Re: New PC Required

Hi

I did a bit of reading on the subject and the summary seems to be yes you can daisy chain and the only time there will be a slow down of speed will be if you access a file off one of the drives and then whilst that activity is happening try and do something on another drive in the chain. Slow down is due to using the same bandwidth.

Hope this helps

Josh

Sounds Reasonable, I intend buying a 2TB Western Digital By Book with raid for Backup and use the 1TB My Book I already have as as a hard drive extension with only my image files only on it.
I have a Buffalo WiFi TeraStation which is very good but as my image files get larger it takes a long time to back things up.
The firewire on the My Books as you say is lightening fast, even with a small amount of slow down will not be inconvenient.

Patrick

Patrick

[yoshi]

Re: New PC Required

Laptop spec:

Minimum 4GB RAM
500GB hard drive
15.6 inch screen - 1366x768 resolution, LED backlight
n-category wireless networking
Gigabit LAN wired networking
Look out for USB3 support
HDMI monitor support
Would be nice to have a PCIe card slot
Ian

Very attractive spec. for me, indeed.

I'm looking for a laptop these days although it's not very urgent (as my main PCs are desktops). My good old IBM laptop assembled in 2004 got a thunder surge last July.
Lenovo's orthorized service center returned it to me without repair saying the repair period expired in March.
A pity because it runs ok except one point - the USB ports do not recognize any external devices - monitor, keyboad, HDD, USB memories ...

At the moment I'm swaying between a laptop and a netbook.
yoshi

[TheBull1875]

Re: New PC Required

Personally firmly in the Windows 7 camp. I have an i7 machine and and a 27" monitor. Younger son has a Mac and I have still had to go and do things for him like getting his wireless printer to work for example(not sure if that is down to him or the Mac though :-)). I have had this machine for over a year now and it has never crashed and never had any downtime for repairs either. Nor have I had any viruses. I am guessing by the demographics on here that there are not a lot of gamers? I am one of these numpties that love Call of Duty etc as well. Don't get them for Mac. I know I can dual boot etc, just seems a waste of time. There is without a doubt a better range of hard and software available for Windows. I guess at the end of the day it is finding a machine that does what you want for the price you want. Up to this machine I have always built my own from scratch ( I was in too much of a hurry for this one), Can't do that with a Mac. Future proofing is impossible but at least with the PC you can upgrade various components as you like. Not sure you can do that with a Mac. As for PC World!! Just don't go there!! Sad, clueless individuals thrown into a job most do not understand except sell sell sell.

[yoshi]

Re: New PC Required

There is without a doubt a better range of hard and software available for Windows. I guess at the end of the day it is finding a machine that does what you want for the price you want. Up to this machine I have always built my own from scratch ( I was in too much of a hurry for this one), Can't do that with a Mac. Future proofing is impossible but at least with the PC you can upgrade various components as you like. Not sure you can do that with a Mac.

Yes, you summarized the pros of Windows/PC very nicely. currently I use two desktop PC's which were built on BTO and I added later some other divices myself as well as one completely self-built PC.

The wider range of choices of both hardwares/softwares including free softs / higher possibility of getting good advices from other PC users when necessary etc. ... price competition is quite hard here so it helps me a lot

I think I partially understand the advantages of Mac which I learned from my Mac-user friends and do not necessarily intend to insist on Windows PC. Maybe I should also add that my Mac-user friends are mostly professional people although not in photography. But again, I'm not saying that correlation exists between Mac and being professional.

I just would like Gina to make a well informed decision especially when she starts her own business.
yoshi

[Ian]